My end of week morning train WFH reads:
• Secret trove illuminates the lives of billionaires The world’s wealthiest are among the most avid users of offshore companies, a new cache of documents known as the Pandora Papers shows, and they turn to tax and secrecy havens for a variety of reasons. (Washington Post)
• The Commonsense Capitalism of Chris James: Engine No. 1’s victory in a boardroom battle with ExxonMobil is taking ESG investing to the next level. (Institutional Investor)
• Supply chain havoc is getting worse — just in time for holiday shopping The most popular holiday gifts might not arrive in time for the holidays, even if you order now. (Recode)
• Who scams the scammers? Meet the scambaiters. Police struggle to catch online fraudsters, often operating from overseas, but now a new breed of amateurs are taking matters into their own hands: Scambaiters – a type of vigilante who disrupts, exposes or even scams the world’s scammers. While scambaiting has a troubled 20-year online history, with early forum users employing extreme, often racist, humiliation tactics, a new breed of scambaiters are taking over TikTok and YouTube. (The Guardian)
• Is Now the Right Time to Sell Your Home? A Seller’s Guide Even a surging property market is no guarantee of profit given closing costs, tax issues and other factors (Wall Street Journal) see also Are U.S. Housing Prices Becoming Unaffordable? Housing prices are rising for a number of reasons: Household formation from the millennial generation, Increased demand to move due to the pandemic, Investors looking for yield and inflation protection, Extremely low mortgage rates. The one variable that could throw a wrench into this equation would be higher mortgage rates. (A Wealth of Common Sense)
• Is “buy now pay later” a viable business model? BNPL might be the hottest game in town but standalone businesses are going to struggle to make any money. (Financial Times)
• Chobani CEO Hamdi Ulukaya is using his yogurt empire to help resettle Afghan refugees Leading a coalition that includes Amazon, Facebook, Hilton, Pfizer, and others, the yogurt mogul is stepping in where the government can’t or won’t. (Fast Company)
• A Whiff of Civil War in the Air Malice and misinformation are driving national division. A recent poll that should shock exactly no one who closely follows American politics and culture. A majority of Trump voters (52 percent) and a strong minority of Biden voters (41 percent) strongly or somewhat agree that it’s “time to split the country.” (The Dispatch)
• The World’s 50 Best Restaurants 2021: The Full List of Winners This is the first World’s 50 Best Restaurants list since the onset of the pandemic. Votes for the 2021 list take into account the votes cast for the 2020 list as well as a March 2021 “refresh” vote, in which voters could issue new votes, but only for restaurants in their own region. (Eater)
• Clint and Ron Howard Remember When They Were Just ‘The Boys’ In a new memoir, the showbiz siblings recall their experiences growing up on “The Andy Griffith Show,” “Star Trek” and other Hollywood classics. But they weren’t all happy days. (New York Times)
Be sure to check out our Masters in Business interview this weekend with Chamath Palihapitiya, founder of Social Capital. He began his career as an engineer and team leader at AOL, Facebook, and Slack, but soon moved into Venture Capital. He earned the nickname “SPAC King” for numerous successful deals he has done, and today is a part-owner of the Golden State Warriors.
More than 4,000 stories mentioned the word “#stagflation” in September, 2X as many as in August, itself a record high going back to 2012
Source: @Schuldensuehner
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